Susan B. Anthony: Pro-Life Feminist

FREDERICA MATHEWES-GREEN

Susan B. Anthony, icon of modern-day feminism, would have been horrified at what is being done in her name. Writing passionately about the evils of abortion she sought to eradicate this most monstrous crime.

The
icon of modern-day feminism would be horrified at what is being done in her name.

Susan B. Anthony is a hero of the feminist movement, and with good cause: She
was a trailblazer in the women's movement in the late 1800s. A Quaker who never
married, Anthony devoted her energy first to the abolition of slavery and then
to women's equality at the ballot box. She and other early feminists believed
that the power of the vote was the key to fulfilling all other goals.

Willing
to go to jail for what she believed, Anthony illegally cast a ballot in the 1872
presidential election and was arrested. Regard for her by modern-day advocates
of women's rights led to the production of the Susan B. Anthony $1 coin in 1979.

"A
most monstrous crime"

There is, however, one thing these advocates
don't know about Anthony, something that might temper their adoration: Susan B.
Anthony was pro-life.

How could a feminist be pro-life? Simple: Abortion hurts
women. Anthony and her friends knew this, and in fact the feminist movement did
not support abortion until the 1970s.

A hundred years ago Anthony wrote an
essay in her publication, The Revolution, about the horrible crime of child-murder.
She was considering specifically the tragedy of abortion within marriage, wherein
a pregnant wife destroys the little being, she thinks, before it lives.

Anthony
wanted to eradicate this most monstrous crime but feared that laws alone would
not be sufficient: We must reach the root of the evil and destroy it.

Anthony
wrote about this evil with passion: Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love
of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is
awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it
will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification,
heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation
which impels her to the crime.

Modern
footsteps

But surely the era of feminists who oppose abortion is
in the past? Not according to Mary Krane Derr, an author who researched the writings
of historical feminists for the book Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today. Derr
discovered dozens of essays by a wide range of feminists decrying the violence
of abortion and its damage to women.

According to the early feminists, abortion
resulted from the denial of the pregnant woman's humanity as much as from a denial
of the unborn child's, wrote Derr, who still terms herself a feminist. Women
felt pressured into aborting because they were deprived of truly life-affirming
sexual and reproductive options. This is still very much the case. If we don't
want unborn children to be treated as insensate clumps of tissue, we must first
of all ensure that their mothers are not treated as insensate clumps of tissue.

When asked if she still calls herself a feminist, author and psychologist Sidney
Callahan says, Oh, yes, I do. Feminism began with an analysis of the abuse of
power and the impulse to fight inequality. My going on to take a pro-life position
was a natural extension of feminism, just making it deeper.

Often in her speeches
Callahan shocks audiences by declaring, Women will never climb to equality and
social empowerment over mounds of dead fetuses.

She believes that many contemporary
feminist themes should point to pro-life conclusions. Feminists were leaders
in the areas of the ecology, peace and nonviolence. All of these contribute to
the pro-life position.

As a popular bumper sticker produced by the organization
Feminists for Life says, Peace Begins in the Womb.

That's a position Susan
B. Anthony would understand. When a man sought to compliment her by saying what
a fine mother she would have been, she responded, Sweeter even than to have had
the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about
a better state of things for mothers generally, so that their unborn little ones
could not be willed away from them.